people have asked for an update on how the ongoing adventure of a club/church/restaurant opening this past month. as i sit here writing i find it hard to imagine that the restaurant is only under a month old and that we have been open just 3 weeks.

here's some things:
1. you really can order corn starch in 20 kg buckets. i was not aware of that. this was not information i thought i would ever use. turns out i was wrong.
3. 3000 cups take up a lot of room
4. we are making money. sort of. our expenses have been crazy but if the current trend continues it's inevitable. the restaurant is becoming hugely popular, which is also a problem in many good ways.
5. apparently christians do drink beer.
6. i had my first day off yesterday. sure there were domestic duties and one mad run to the grocery store for the restaurant but it was still a day off. i loved it.
7. we have begun advertising for clubchurch in the restaurant. we are connecting with the community. people who somehow thought i had dropped off the face of the planet are finding that i am in fact around and stopping by to talk, reminisce, get down and heavy, or just try to scam a free coffee. i feel like we are able to affect lives like never before. I finally feel like we have started something people actually want, not something we think they should have.
8. i have great friends, especially the young ones. dozens of teens helped countless hours getting things ready, as well as some good friends.
9. i make some people nervous. i spoke with another pastor last week who wondered if we were going to try to 'get' his people through the restaurant. i told him i hoped to 'get' them to buy a beef dip. a pastor from a denomination that i approached months ago to partner with contacted me today wanting to get involved, now that it seems to be a "success" (whatever that means). i politely reminded him that they wouldn't return my calls 6 months ago.
10. i love being in the community again. i love connecting and talking with people who know that i am a business owner but have some pre-knowledge that the bad dog grill is more than just another restaurant.
11. i have great staff and co-owners. lori and annette have put in hundreds of hours for free. josh and matt and briant and ben have worked like dogs. bad dogs.

i've been involved in seven church plants but i have to be honest, starting a restaurant is WAY harder...

lori and annette share two different reactions to the opening/cling/opening of the bad dog bistro and grill.

I had come to the restaurant just after 8 am and parked on the lower street, intent on walking up the alley. You know, to keep a free spot out front for customers. You ever have one of those weird experiences that when you look back everything makes sense but you miss it at the time?

Seen the movie Signs? Throughout the movie they keep telling you stupid, seemingly insignificant stuff. So what if the little girl has a thing about water and keeps leaving glasses around the house. It doesn’t seem to add anything to the plot at all. And who cares if there is a baseball bat mounted on the wall, or that Juaquin Phoenix swings really hard when he plays baseball. Even the part about the wife getting cut in two and telling him to swing away… why would they mention that detail. Until the end. An alien is in the front room, there are glasses everywhere half full of water, the bat is on the wall and they suddenly, in the midst of the drama, cut back to the car accident scene. Why?

It pans to the mom and you hear her say, "tell Merrill to swing away".

Pan back to the alien scene and you see Merrill take the bat down from the wall and you can feel it. It’s happening. It's electric.

The two circle the room and you hear Mel Gibson say, "You just have to ask yourself, what kind of person are you? Are you the type that sees signs? Sees miracles? Or do you think that people just get lucky? Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"

Back to the scene that morning as I walked to the alley. For some reason it was raining inside the Survey business underneath us. I knew it didn’t look right, I knew it was mayhem, but it didn’t register. Wow I thought, those guys are boned.

I walked up the alley and onto first avenue. Something inside me registered that the windows in the restaurant were all fogged up, but again, it seemed like coincidence. It was simply glasses left around the front room, it was only a bat hanging on the wall. It was coincidence.

I opened the door and suddenly, in a split second, all the coincidences screamed down upon me. Freeze frame scenes from my walk - the alley, the rain, the steamed window. From the ceiling a stream of water was pouring into the room, the floor was 3 inches deep in water. The ceiling had collapsed.

The steamed windows, the rain inside the downstairs building. There were no more coincidences.

That morning consumed me. Businesses were ruined, we were shut down. There were insurance agents, and restoration companies, and an absent landlord. Dollar signs whirled in my head. I was mopping the floor. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I was emotionally melting.

Only a half hour earlier I had been called about my cousin's suicide but it seemed years away. It didn’t register. Or at least I didn’t think it did.

That night I had a bit of a private meltdown. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t cry. I never cry. For the last 3 or 4 years I have been unable to cry. But something was still broken.

Her family are atheists. They believe fervently that once you die you are worm food. There is nothing to hope for, nothing to believe, nothing but hopelessness. There is no ultimate reason to live. Suicide is the ultimate crime. Life for an atheist is so short anyway, then to end it pre-maturely...

This Monday they are going to have a funeral. Will there be a sense there of utter despair? They won’t have a minister, they won’t have a eulogy. It will be incredibly painful and senseless. It’s a nightmare.

Sometimes people ask me why I’m a Christian. Why I would buy into an ancient religion that doesn’t have any application to today’s world? The world has outgrown faith, they believe. Not too long ago one of the people who will be attending that funeral asked me that exact question.

There are a lot of things that you could launch into after hearing my story. You could argue that we need to use our time wisely, that we need to defend our faith, that we need to take a strong moral stand on suicide or whatever. There are a lot of things you could say about this. You could simply tell me it’s all coincidence, it’s just life, it’s meaningless.

You just have to ask yourself, what kind of person are you? Are you the type that sees signs? Sees miracles? Or do you think that people just get lucky? Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"

Maybe this isn’t just a coincidence. While I in no way believe this was orchestrated to teach me a lesson, maybe God could use this to remind me that as bad as a flood can be, it’s nothing compared to a life. It’s so easy to get caught up in our stupid little schemes and our relentless lives and forget that every couple of minutes someone kills themselves because they have no hope. No future.

4 days.... after and before. can you see the original purple floor?







click on images to enlarge

4 days, $20,000

complete and utter restaurant makeover.

we open in an hour.